Treasures for Pittance

Another rainy day in a spell of very rainy/grey days.

Not much outdoorsy things going on. Today on our

way to school, we spied the first neon-bright garage

sale signs of the year along the road and Emily strongly

encouraged me to patronize them while she was at school.

How glad I am to have taken her advice!

Behold our treasures - brand new snap circuits set,

a bag of duplo people, Tinkertoys, three Richard

Scarry videos, five puzzles, a Cinderella dress and

vintage Little People cottage and parking garage.

These last two will join the rest of The Village at

Nana's and G. Arne's house, which the kids love

playing with every time we visit:

I was most pleased with this

which the girls have been informed is Mum's Toy,

which might be shared with them, maybe.

Never mind that it was all grey and drizzly outside -

after school, the three girls played

and played.

When Dave got home this evening, he was a bit excited

about the vintage Little People sets, in particular, the

parking garage, which he said he once had but was 

now strangely missing from The Village.

I learned three important things from today's adventure:

1. Always have cash in one's wallet. Always. I did, today, and I don't usually. Phew.
   
2. Always have a stroller in the van. Always. I didn't today, and my arm died somewhere after the second stop.
   
3. Always wear black pants. Always. One never knows when one might meet a friendly dog with muddy paws.
   

So a very productive day - 3 lessons and 14 different 

entertainment items. For $13. Now that's shopping.

Eclairs!

Indulged in some baking today - 

choux pastry on the stove-then-oven.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup water
  
• 4 oz butter
  
• pinch of salt
  
• 5 oz all-purpose flour
  
• 4 eggs
  
• 2 tsp sugar (optional)
  

Method:

1. In medium saucepan over medium heat, combine water, butter and salt.
   
2. When butter is melted, lower heat and add in flour, whisking or stirring vigorously with wooden spoon.
   
3. Remove from heat and beat eggs.
   
4. Add in eggs one by one, stirring well after each addition.
   
5. Scoop warm dough (which should be glossy and form stiff peaks when spoon is removed) into piping bag with large nozzle.
   
6. Pipe long shapes or rounds 2" apart on an ungreased baking sheet OR baking sheet with parchment paper on it OR baking sheet with silpat mat. Sufficient space must be left between individual puffs in order for them to rise (has to do with air circulation and what not) even though they will not spread much.
   
7. Bake at 425 F for 10 mins, then lower temperature to 350F for another 20 mins ++, or until pastry is golden brown.
   
8. Cool completely, then cut slits in the sides to pipe (or scoop) in whipped cream.
   
9. Top with melted chocolate.
   

Wish I'd gotten a photo of Jenna and Kate partaking 

of the final products - very brown all over.

We also baked a half-batch of ostensibly idiot-proof 

chocolate chip cookies for a less bourgeois dessert/ snack, 

but they came out looking remarkably like manhole covers 

with tumors. Well, you win some, you lose some.

Miscellaneous Warm Weather Updates

Spring is off to a good start! 

Emily and her classmates made their class T-shirt today.

They will be wearing their T-shirts on their field trip 

(aka excursion) to the farm next fortnight. Emily is 

thrilled to bits, and desperately counting down to the 

date because of, among other things, the bus ride 

there and back! She so loves the idea of riding in 

a school bus with her friends that it, rather than 

the farm itself, might well be the highlight of the trip.

Other fun warm-weather things she is doing in school: 

the kids are growing grass in little containers, which 

they will trim with scissors as it grows. Also, the school 

is getting some (gack!) caterpillars to help them in their 

study of metamorphosis and life-cycles. Help. It is taking 

all my acting abilities to behave calm and interested 

when discussing this topic. Caterpillars SO give 

me the heebie-jeebies. 

Today was an 80-degree day so we were 

out in the yard in minimal clothes. 

This past fortnight, the neighbors have been coming 

over to play so I have had a bit of extra help with the kids. 

Today we made our first visit of the year to the Ring 

Mountain Creamery for gelato. They were all out of 

blood orange already, which was sorely disappointing. 

But they promised to make more, so there is hope for 

the rest of the summer. It's hard to eat any other flavor 

when one has had blood orange. 

Easter

We were up at G. and G. Arne' and Karen's home 

for the Easter weekend. 

The older girls and Nana (G. Karen) made the Lamb Cake, 

which has become one of the happy Easter traditions in 

the family, along with the egg hunt.

Kate was happy to hang out with Grandpa.

On Easter morning, we all got dressed for church

before spending lunch and tea at Shannon's and Shelli's 

(which Jenna called Shelli and Jelly) house, another Easter 

tradition (spending the day at the house, not 

mis-naming the gracious hosts, I mean). 

Sorry- I know the photo is hardly an informative overview 

of the exciting Easter-ish happenings at Shelli and Jelly's, 

but I'm sleepy of eye and dull of mind tonight. Might feel 

a bit cleverer by next post, but unlikely!

Kate has caught on

Today Kate pointed at Jenna's bupbilla and said, "Buppa!"

YESSSSSSS!

Isms

Emily: "Goosepox is what I get when the deck door is open and I have a short-sleeved shirt and shorts."

Jenna, on being interrupted in her "Let Us Give Birth To Our Dollies" game for some bottom-hygiene: "No! I don't want my diaper changed! You got the wrooooong guy!"

Photo of the Day and Tooth News

Unrelated, Emily had her extra tooth taken out today by 

the oral surgeon. Mesiodens, it was called (the tooth, not 

the oral surgeon). She was under general anesthetic during 

the extraction, which lasted about 10 minutes. She came home 

with her tooth in a small packet and a pint of ice cream from 

the clinic. The ice cream went into the freezer and the tooth 

went under her pillow. There was no swelling at all and, if 

not told, a person would never guess she had had anything 

special happen to her teeth that day. Not surprisingly, she told 

all the neighbors this afternoon so she might as well have 

had a fat cheek, slurpy speech and a hunk of gauze sticking 

out of her mouth. She was a little tired after the procedure 

but otherwise her normal self, and able to eat solid food 

by lunch time and get all dressed up and busy playing with 

the neighbors after her nap. Thank you all for praying!

Spring

I should be in bed now. I have a cold (again). So do the three
kids (again). But Spring is here. Finally. And the snow is
truly gone for the next half year. We unveiled our deck and
all the warm-weather equipment, took the bike and trike
down from the attic, shook the moths out of our shorts,
dusted the cobwebs from our sandals
and ran outside with arms open wide.

On Tuesday, the girls had an outdoor lunch on their
new used picnic table that our neighbor gave us.

Jenna is now an almost permanent fixture
in the sandbox in the afternoons.

Dave set up the swings on our swingset,
watched by appreciative neighbors.

The girls really, really like being outside,

Kate most of all, although she isn't in these pictures.
It takes some coordination to watch all three kids now
that their roaming radius extends beyond the confines
of the house. All it takes is a few seconds when my back
is turned for some creative new disaster to happen -
someone spills lemonade on the rug and my shoes, someone
gets chased by a bee, someone gets multiple splinters,
someone falls off the swing, someone climbs on the picnic
table, someone throws toys off the deck, someone eats sand,
someone chews on the neighbor's dog's toy. On Tuesday
after I'd cleaned up various messes, gone shoe-hunting in
the grass and rescued the flyaway umbrella five times, I was
almost missing winter. Almost. Then I reminded myself
that winter, while easier, was not this much fun. And that
with each new spring, everyone gets a year older and a year
closer to puberty, which makes this the easy stuff.

Smurfs

were spotted in our backyard this morning.

There was Smurfette, acting all coy amidst the tall grass,

Papa Smurf, conducting some outdoor experiments, 

wide-eyed with surprise at being discovered 

and several others going about their business.

Ah, what a nice trip back to my childhood, when Smurfs 

were practically mandatory Saturday morning TV. We could 

do voice impersonations of all the Smurfs, although Sean 

(brother) was especially spectacular at being Gargamel and 

Azrael. We had Smurf merchandize but that eventually either

got lost or thrown away. Two years ago, Grandpa Desmond 

revived the Smurf love in our next generation by giving Emily 

the first season of Smurfs on DVD. Immediately our family 

adopted their own personal characters: Emily was Smurfette 

(of course), Jenna was Jokey and Kate was Hefty because

she could single-handedly destroy the contents of our house. 

Dave thought he might be Brainy and the kids unanimously 

agreed I should be Clumsy, for all my regular tripping 

over small toys.

To cope with the dearth of Smurf paraphernalia for sale, 

I entertained the crazy thought of sewing some someday. 

The kids MUST be given the opportunity to pretend-play 

the odd, utopia community of fashion-compliant creatures 

living in refurbished fungi, mustn't they? I thought so, too.

But this morning, on a harmless shopping trip to Target, 

I found this little mushroom house on sale! Couldn't 

believe my eyes. Never mind that it is not vintage crop - 

Smurfs are Smurfs, and as the checkout lady so aptly put it, 

"Well! They're finally bringing back the good stuff!"

Emily was thrilled to have one of her favorite movies come 

to life in plastic and immediately corralled some of her 

other small dolls to come and have tea with Smurfette, Papa 

Smurf, Poet and Normal Smurf (smurf without distinguishing 

features). Among the more unusual visitors was Jesus, 

played by Sleeping Beauty.

Me: Eh? Why is Jesus Sleeping Beauty?

E: Because Sleeping Beauty has a long dress and people 

long ago like when Jesus lived, had long dresses. 

Can't dispute logic like that, I suppose. 

Well, am off to put the kids down for naps so I can 

get my hands on the mushroom house myself rest a bit.

The White Owie and the Red Owie

Jenna got two splinters in her hand today. She was playing with the neighbor kids and suddenly ran away to a corner of the garden by herself and then came back to me, holding her hand. I looked at it and there was a huge sliver in her thumb. So we went indoors to extract it. First tried the tweezers - failed. Then cauterized a needle and dug it out. Not a sound from Jenna the whole time. She just stared in fascination, not wincing or complaining. 

When the splinter was out, the wound began to bleed a little and Jenna finally displayed some emotion.

"Take the red thing away, mom."

"That's blood, Jenna."

"I don't like the red thing."

We put a band-aid on it and, the red thing covered, Jenna was happy and went back to play.

At dinner, she stared at her other hand long and hard and then declared she had another owie. Turned out to be splinter #2, so I extracted that as well. This was a very small one, so there was no bleeding.

During bathtime, Jenna complained that her owies were hurting and she came out in her towel to report to me.

"Which one hurts?" I asked her.

"The white owie doesn't hurt but the red owie hurts, mom."

This made no sense until she showed me her two little wounds - the red owie was the first one, with some dried blood and the white owie was the second, bloodless one. 

We put new band-aids on them to cover the colors and Jenna was OK again.

 

Toddlers are Cleverer Than Grownups

Kate had her one-year checkup today and came home 

with four band-aids (i.e. plasters) on her person to show 

for her interaction with the nurses' syringes. Jenna was 

a bit alarmed at the band- aids and we had a 

short conversation about them.

J:   Why does Katie have band-aids, mom?

M:  She had shots at her checkup today.

J:   Why did she have shots?

M:  Well.... (trying to pick easy words to disguise an unpleasant experience) see, the shots have something in them that makes your body strong so that err... you won't get sick. There's good medicine in them so that you won't be sick later, which is much, much better than not having the shots and getting sick later. (Felt very clever and proud that I managed such a fantastic translation into Toddlerspeak).

J: Shots keep babies healthy.

Speechless. 

I have a loooooong way to go with Toddlerspeak.

Comfort Soup

Interesting observation while being sick the last fortnight: 

I opened a can of Cream of Mushroom soup, prepared it 

and then drank it. Dave was appalled - nobody in MN drinks 

the stuff; everyone uses it only for cooking. Similarly, I've 

never seen cream of mushroom soup on any menu here. 

Shame, because real cream of mushroom soup 

(not the canned variety) is to die for. 

But as far as comfort soup goes, COM is what my family 

enjoyed whenever we were sick and whenever we weren't. 

Drinking it, I mean. We never cooked with it. Crazy 

Singaporean in Minnesota! The weirdness of my COM 

fetish here must be the equivalent of an American in 

Singapore with a bottle of soya sauce, I suppose. 

Drinking it, I mean, not cooking.

Jenna Got A Haircut

I covet her hair color. I want. I want.

Jenna had such a wonderful exciting experience at the 

hair salon that she came home and recreated it with Emily

down to driving to the place in the cardboard car.

For those wondering why Emily is dressed as if it 

were summer - all we can say is that some people 

will willingly sacrifice comfort for fashion. 

Kate's New Tricks

Climbing on chairs to get at high-up stuff, 

like her birthday presents.

Going down stairs

and cleaning up during.